India’s manned space mission scheduled for 2016

Bangalore: Six years from now the first Indians will travel to space for a week long mission on indigenously developed launch platforms and space capsules. India's first manned mission has now been scheduled for 2016, and will see two astronauts spending seven days in a low earth orbit, according to a top Indian space agency official.

Indian Navy frogmen recovering the SRE-1 Capsule after splashdown in the Bay of Bengal

''We are planning a human space flight in 2016, with two astronauts who will spend seven days in the earth's lower orbit,'' Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman Dr K Radhakrishnan told reporters here.

ISRO officials are currently preparing a pre-project report that will enable infrastructure and facilities for the mission to be created, at an estimated cost of Rs12, 655 crore ($2.76 billion).

The manned mission has already received in-principle approval from the Planning Commission.

''We will design and develop the space module for the manned mission in the next four years. Two astronauts will be selected to train for the space flight,'' Dr Radhakrishnan said, speaking on the margins of a space event.

ISRO said it will set up a full-fledged training facility in this city for training the astronauts and will also build a third launch pad at its spaceport at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh.